The Mistakes of a Failing Leader
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
This is a difficult text to approach because of the sensitive nature of it’s content. The events that transpire here are truly horrific and difficult to read about. It is one of the most disturbing stories in the book of Genesis, rivaling and in many ways parallel to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is meant to shock and disturb us, the readers, and force us to ask, why did this happen? And why are we being told about it? How does this terrible story help us understand what the book of Genesis is trying to communicate?
To answer that question, we need to first look at where this text exists. Since it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been in the book of Genesis, lets look at that quickly. Jacob had just survived an ordeal with his brother, but more importantly, a wrestling match with God where he had finally overcome his trust in self and come to trust in and submit to God. God delivered Jacob, now named Israel, out of the hand of Esau and even gave him his forgiveness and friendship. Esau invited Jacob to go back with him, but Jacob said he would come after. This is where the problems in our text begin; Jacob lied to Esau, he apparently didn’t trust him. Instead of following his brother, he plants himself outside of a Canaanite city of Succoth and even buys land there.
This turns out to be the first of three majour mistakes that are made in this text by Jacob and his sons that, unfortunately, remind us that the change brought about by Jacob’s encounter with God just one chapter ago is still limited. In fact, the author intentionally uses his old name ‘Jacob’ rather than ‘Israel’ to highlight this. He’s acting like the old man God wants him to leave behind, not the new man he is being created to be. This war between the person he was and the person he’s being made into is important, because it shows us the need even the fathers of the OT faith had for a greater power to overcome indwelling sin.
Mistake #1: Jacob’s Irresponsibility
Mistake #1: Jacob’s Irresponsibility
There have been some different ways of looking at this text. I’ve even heard some suggest that the story teaches women to be careful where to go alone. This is not the point of the story, the point of the story is Jacob and how he acts that both allows this situation to happen and how he reacts. Jacob’s first mistake is irresponsibility. It is a lack of godly headship in how he leads his family that brings this tragedy to come to pass.
When I say that Jacob’s first mistake in this story is irresponsibility, what responsibility is he failing to uphold? Not only does he have the obvious responsibilities of a husband and father, he has the responsibility of leading his household in a righteous, faithful, and God-orientated direction. It is the inherited role that God gave Abraham in Genesis 18:19
For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”
God expected Israel to lead his family in a way that showed the righteousness and justice of God, and Abraham’s faith and prayers that follow in Genesis 18 protect his nephew from the dangers that he was facing in the Canaanite city of Sodom. Now, instead of demonstrating faith in God’s deliverance from the hand of Esau, Jacob flees once more from his brother and goes to a Canaanite city. Now, having heard the story Sodom and Gomorrah and what we know even historically about the Canaanites, one thing we know about them is that they are sexual deviants. Most not as bad as Sodom, and we see the perversion in our text somewhat less barbaric than what we saw in the case of Sodom, but it is something that seems to define them.
Moving to a Canaanite City
Moving to a Canaanite City
The parallel between Sodom and Succoth is important because, while Jacob is supposed to be paralleling his grandfather Abraham, his actions look more like Lot. Instead of leading his family in faith, he’s foolishly going to a human city for safety. Again, the theme of ‘city’ in the book of Genesis is symbolic of trust in human works and abilities rather than the grace and providence of God. This trust in humanity always fails, whether it is the descendants of Cain who eventually became tyrannical, or the building of the Tower of Babel, or Abraham in Egypt, or going to any place of human power for help and protection rather than God. It will fail, and it definitely fails here.
Instead of going to this city and buying a field there, Jacob should have gone back to Bethel, where he had promised God he would worship as the house of God. Instead, he has built an alter here by this Canaanite city and made this his place of worship. In other words, he is worshipping God in his own way, not according to how God revealed himself or even according to his own word.
Failing to Protect his Daughter
Failing to Protect his Daughter
Another way that Jacob fails to walk in the responsibility that God has given him is that he fails to protect his daughter from the dangers that she is exposed to. Commentators agree that Dinah would have been around 15 years old at the time, and Jacob ought to know how depraved the Canaanites are, and he may have even heard the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from his grandfather Abraham. Jacob seems to not even bother sending one of her older brothers with her. One commentator notes, “Girls of a marriageable age would not normally leave a rural encampment to go unchaperoned into an alien city.” Jacob takes no precautions or steps to protect his children and his daughter suffers for this lack of protection. In failing to protect his daughter, Jacob shows himself to be an incapable leader and does not represent the leadership of God or his character as a protecting and loving father.
Mistake #2: Jacob’s Wicked Passivity
Mistake #2: Jacob’s Wicked Passivity
This leads to the next majour mistake that Jacob makes in this text: his ungodly passivity. We are not surprised by the disgusting behavior of the Canaanites. There is a reason God annihilated these people in judgement in years to come. They were brutal and cruel people, and this young prince is a prime example of a amoral spoiled child who will take whatever he wants for himself. What is surprising is Jacob’s response to the rape of his daughter. I don’t know any person who would respond this way, and that’s not a good thing. We later find out that, once again, Jacob is afraid. Ironically, Jacob, who came to this Canaanite city because he seems to still be afraid of his pacified brother, is afraid of the Canaanites now and so he feels he cannot do anything in a search for justice. There are two majour problems with his passivity here.
First, his lack of a sense of Justice. Reading of such a disgusting deed should rightly raise our blood pressure. It is wrong and harmful in every way and we naturally want to see justice done in this case. And yet, sinful nature takes the natural sense of justice, a sense given to us at creation in order to image the justice of God, and distorts it. This distortion comes in many forms, and they are all founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of justice, and this misunderstanding can be easily pointed out when you read the OT law and compare it with similar law codes of the time. In Assyria it was against the law to commit adultery, just as it was in Israel. But in Assyria the husband of the adulteress would decide the fate of both his wife and the man she was unfaithful with. This was because the husband of the wife was seen as the victim in this case. But in the law of God given to Israel both would be put to death for their crimes. Why? We can conclude that it is because God is the one who is the victim of the adultery, and the spouse of the adulterer or adulteress is a secondary victim. This is why, after he commited adultery and murder, King David admitted in Psalm 51:4 that it was against God alone that he had sinned. The problem with our fallen view of justice is that it is centred around man, not around God.
This is the case in Jacob’s position. We need not assume that he is simply uncaring for his daughter. Rather, he is afraid to seek justice in this matter because he knows that the Canaanites are much stronger than him. He is also aware that Dinah is captive in the city. These Canaanites have defiled a daughter of Israel, are keeping her captive, and in the dialogue they pretend the rape never happened and talk only of intermarriage, something that is forbidden in the OT between a believing Israelite and an unbelieving pagan. Abraham had emphasized that Isaac not marry a Canaanite because of how their wickedness and paganism would water down the worship of God and introduce a spirit of worldliness in them.
The second problem with his passivity is that he completely abandons leadership altogether. When a leader stops leading, the result is often chaotic. In this case, Jacob is afraid to contradict or deny Shechem his desire and so he says nothing at all and lets his hotheaded sons take charge. A true leader is a leader when it really matters. A true leader also takes responsibility for his actions. But most importantly, a true leader turns to God for help. Unfortunately, Jacob does not turn to God for help like he did in chapter 32. Instead we get only a deafening silence from him.
Mistake #3: Simeon and Levi’s Unjust Revenge
Mistake #3: Simeon and Levi’s Unjust Revenge
And that silence leads to the third mistake made by the household of Jacob in this case. When leadership is lacking, someone steps in to fill that void and that someone is his sons. In this story, Jacob and his sons embody the stereotype of the older man who won’t take the necessary action and the young men who passionately take foolish actions. Since Jacob won’t step in a demand justice, his sons step in with a plan of deceit leading to a wicked bloodbath motivated, not by justice but by revenge. They trick the entire city into circumcising their men and while they are sore from the circumcision Simeon and Levi kill them all, reclaim their sister, and then all the boys plunder the city, take the woman and children as slaves presumably, and leave it abandoned. Revenge rarely suits the crime, and in this case the death of an entire city was above and beyond what justice would call for because it was driven by passion. This passion is not a godly passion because it is centred on a perception of self-injury. In other words, they are more concerned about what this sin did to them and their family than they are about the glory of God and his justice. This is evident in verse 31, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?” Their challenge is correct, but notice that instead of naming her they identify her as “our sister”.
What’s important to them is their own humiliation in the event. This revenge is as much about their own ego as anything. God isn’t at the centre of their thinking, in fact God is nowhere to be found in this story, not because he isn’t present, but because he isn’t sought. And because he isn’t sought, everything that could go wrong does.
This is an important moment for Simeon and Levi, because it is the moment that they are both excluded from the promise that leads to Christ. That promise will come through Judah, but why through Judah, since he is the 4th born, not the 1st? He has 3 people ahead of him in line, and as the story goes those 3 will be eliminated. Jacob’s blessings in Genesis 49 detail this point, crossing out Reuben because of what he does with Jacob’s concubine, and these two boys because of this incident even though all the brothers are complicit. Listen to the curse they are given at the end of Jacob’s life:
“Simeon and Levi are brothers;
weapons of violence are their swords.
Let my soul come not into their council;
O my glory, be not joined to their company.
For in their anger they killed men,
and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
and scatter them in Israel.
The long and short of this disturbing story is that everyone messed up pretty bad and no one turned to God in faith, and as a result no one left this situation happy. It’s not a fun story to read and in some ways it seems to contradict the entire flow of the story, Jacob’s movement away from unbelief and into faith. So why is this here and why are we reading it today?
Why are we Reading about this?
Why are we Reading about this?
Like every word of Scripture, it is given to us for a reason and it ultimately points us to Christ. Lets looks at what this story shows us and how it brings us to meditate upon our saviour.
Negative Examples of godly leadership
It may seem obvious, but it’s worth mentioning that there is no one in this text whose example is one of godliness. In a sense, everything we see happen here we should see as the opposite of what we should do. Andy this is helpful because this text specifically shows a lack of godly leadership, and this negative example can help us identify weaknesses in our own lives. Husbands and Fathers, I very much doubt you’ve messed up as bad and Jacob has in this text, but in our day the character of Jacob is unfortunately exemplified in many men. There is a great lack of leadership in our day, partly because there are fewer and fewer good examples of godly leaders. Many leaders either become authoritarian bosses or, like Jacob, they lose any courage in the position God has given them and they are eager to loose the authority to whoever is willing to take it.
This has caused many Christian families to become very confused. Where the husband is supposed to be the leader of the household, in many Christian homes there is no sense of strong, Christ-pointed leadership. Many complain of how many Christian kids leave the faith in college, but I wonder whether they were actually taught the word of God faithfully at home. I wonder whether the time that could have been spent instructing, encouraging, and speaking of the things of God was squandered on the distractions of our age. I wonder how many children in Christian homes are being raised by a combination of social media, movies, and video games rather than by an intentional father and mother.
The same could be said for many churches. Some churches embrace authoritarian practices where the pastor is King rather than Christ, and some have pastors that weakly back away from any kind of strong leadership that is necessary in the church. We here at Faith subscribe to congregationalism, which means that there is an authority structure of elders and deacons as laid out for leadership in the church, but that authority is held accountable to the congreagtion and it is the congregation that votes in leaders and together we, as the people of God, take the church in the direction God is leading us as a body. But a congregational system is impossible if the congregation itself does not actively seek leadership. We need each member to be much more than a pew warmer, we are the living body of Christ. We need your gifts of evangelism, leadership, hospitality and more and we need you to put those gifts to work in harmony with the rest of the body. Passive leadership can sometimes be the result of a passive congregation as well as a passive pastor. God has gifted you with something to give to this church. I urge you to step up to the plate. Talk to other believers and to your elders about your ideas for evangelism or your desire to help a specific brother or sister in the church. If you believe you are qualified and called to the position of an elder or deacon, talk to us about that as well. Let us not be passive in what we do here in the church, let us pursue it and grow in it for his glory. If the passivity and carelessness that Jacob exemplifies in this text rings familiar to you, it may be something to ponder.
Jacob’s Inability to be the Covenant Leader he is called to be causes us to look for a better Covenant Leader
But the point of looking at Jacob’s poor example is not a simple call to be “better.” That would be the approach of a Pharisee. We certainly learn from people’s mistakes as well as our own, but rather than looking down on Jacob, his sons, or even the wicked prince of Succoth, we should be very aware of how similar we are in our own sinful nature. Jacob failed to be an effective and godly leader, but have you not failed in the same ways? Jacob succumbed to a fear of man rather than submitting to God, but haven’t you done the same thing? I know I have. Simeon, Levi, and the other sons acted out of unrighteous anger based in a sense of revenge and not based on a true desire for justice, have you not been overcome by vengeful anger in your heart? If you read this story and the takeaway is, “wow those were a bunch of horrible people making bad decisions, good thing I’m not like that.” You’ve missed the point. A frightening truth is that even the worst crimes in history are motivated by sinful desires that are common in all of us. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Although we are all born with a sense of justice, we are also born with a sinful nature that compromises that justice for different reasons. It is easy for us to complain about the corruption in our nations leaders, but have you considered that the same corruption exists in you? Self-righteousness will blind us to that fact, and that’s important to fight because unless we see our own depravity in the depravity of others, we will never be rid of the pride that would prevent us from seeing the truth. We need a new leader, a better leader, and none of us are qualified for the job.
Christ: A good leader
No leader in the OT is painted as good enough. Even Abraham, David, and Moses, arguably the most iconic and faithful leaders of God’s people in the OT, failed at some point in their leadership. Jacob’s failure is shared by other covenant leaders. Through all of it, we are being reminded that none of these men will do as the King of God’s people. We need someone better than Jacob, someone better than Abraham or David or Moses, and someone better than any human being we could follow. Any church or Christian that follows a pastor or a preacher or an author will be either very disappointed or forced to defend their sin. You need a perfect leader.
And that leader is God himself in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the King, the redeemer, and the great leader of God’s people. He is worth following both in word and example. We will never have to cover up his mistakes, we will never find ourselves rightly disappointed by his leadership, and because of his incarnation we have an example to follow who has takin on our weaknesses and difficulties. We have, forever, a leader to follow if we will indeed follow him. Hebrews 2:6 says,
but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.
Not only was he more faithful over God’s people, but he is faithful as the only begotten sun of the Father. He has a right to the people of God as a possession of inheritance, not as a servant or a simple overseer. Thus, Christ has both the ability to lead us to God and the right to us as his people. His blood on the cross proved this right and our release from the power of sin and its corruption. The reason we have corrupt leaders and politicians is because we are a corrupt people, but thanks be to God that he has redeemed us from this corruption to serve him in holiness and purity.
Conclusion
Conclusion
And so, this passage leads us right to the foot of the cross. Right to the place where Jesus did everything right when we, like Jacob, do everything wrong. While Jacob was concerned for his own skin, just as we are prone to be, Jesus gave his life to protect and provide. Instead of leading us to the Canaanites, Jesus leads us to Bethel, the house of God, where we may be in the presence of God without fear. Instead of ignoring a gross injustice, Jesus is the judge of all the world and will cover the sins of his people and justly punish the wicked. Instead of an uncontrolled, vengeful, and unjust rage, Jesus patiently waits for the repentance of the wicked and will deal out every drop of the wrath of God in justice and no more or less. He is fair, he is merciful, he is strong, he is loving, he is the leader we need.